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B. BAGHDAD 342 - IESC MEETING OF FEBRUARY 1
C. BAGHDAD 177 - A GLIMPSE OF COURAGE IN BAGHDAD
Classified By: Classified by Deputy Political Counselor Greg D'Elia for
reasons 1.4 (b,d).
1. (C) SUMMARY: Sayid Nemah Jabour of the office of the
Iraqi National Security Advisor told poloff February 15 that
the new Project Clean Delivery (PCD) kerosene distribution
system had significantly diminished militia revenue from the
theft and sale of kerosene. Jabour said that an Iraqi
interagency team had conducted a "clean" delivery through PCD
to six of Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhoods since
January 28. Approximately 90 percent of kerosene deliveries
in the PCD neighborhoods avoided militia profiteering and
government corruption by going straight from the fuel depot
to the consumer, in the estimate of Jabour and the Deputy
Inspector General of the Ministry of Oil (MoO), Alaa Mahdi
Al-Deen. According to Jabour and Al-Deen, PCD has served the
GoI as an invaluable diagnostic instrument, exposing the
fraudulent practices of MoO officials who aid and abet
militia control of essential services. Jabour described to
the Prime Minister on February 1 the systemic corruption in
kerosene distribution that PCD uncovered during its first
five days -- the MoO cannot account for about 85 percent of
the kerosene distributed in non-PCD Baghdad neighborhoods
during the period that PCD has operated. Jabour argued that
the violent response of militants -- killing two local
officials involved with PCD and threatening two others --
confirms the project's impact. Jabour's team intends to
build on PCD to improve and sustain a new Baghdad-wide
distribution system for kerosene, and to extend their system
to other petroleum products. END SUMMARY.
--------------------------------------------- ---------------
PROJECT AIMS TO IMPROVE ESSENTIAL SERVICES, FIGHT CORRUPTION
--------------------------------------------- ---------------
2. (C) BACKGROUND: Initiated in September 2007 by the
Embassy political section, Project Clean Delivery (PCD) aims
to build GoI capacity to provide essential services by
improving efficiency, removing corruption and countering
militia influence (reftels A and B). PCD seeks to help
Iraqis develop "best practices" recommendations through a
close focus on one service -- the distribution of kerosene to
Baghdad residents. The timing has been critical, since
Baghdad residents rely on kerosene to heat their homes during
the winter. After two months of inter agency research and
development by a team comprising seventeen different
Coalition agencies, Embassy officers identified in November
an Iraqi "champion" to lead the project: Sayid Jabour
(strictly protect) of the office of the National Security
Advisor.
3. (C) BACKGROUND CONT'D: Jabour immediately assumed
ownership of the project and assembled an Iraqi inter agency
team from eight government entities. With Jabour fully in
charge, the Coalition adopted a support and advisory role.
That approach was vindicated in late November when Jabour and
his team devised a new kerosene distribution plan that
featured significantly enhanced security measures and inter
ministerial coordination. They then implemented a pilot
project to deliver kerosene more efficiently and "cleanly" in
one Baghdad neighborhood -- Kindi -- during December. After
the success of their pilot project, the Iraqi PCD team began
January 28 to expand their new system to six more
neighborhoods, and plan to continue expanding it throughout
Baghdad. END BACKGROUND.
--------------------------------------------- ---
A "CLEAN" DELIVERY TO 28,000 FAMILIES IN BAGHDAD
--------------------------------------------- ---
4. (C) Members of the Iraqi inter agency PCD team told
PRToff that, as of February 17, they had delivered
approximately 2.8 million liters of kerosene to 28,000
families in seven Baghdad neighborhoods (Kindi (pilot
project), Ameriya, Ghazaliya, Zayuna, Beladiyat, Zafaraniya,
and Salhiya). Jabour said that his team and the MoO
Inspector General's (IG) office tracked the kerosene
delivered through PCD from the ground (or import) to the
depot and then all the way to the consumer. Since the
project's expansion began on January 28, they have provided a
weekly update on its implementation directly to the Prime
Minister at the Iraq Executive Steering Committee (I-ESC)
meeting. To illustrate his close inspection, the MoO Deputy
IG, Alaa Mahdi Al-Deen (strictly protect), told PRToff
February 18 that the GoI has delivered precisely 2,801,030
liters of kerosene through the new PCD system. In a separate
conversation, the leading Baghdad Provincial Council member
on the PCD team, Salam Hanoun Mosalat (strictly protect),
told PRToff February 18 that PCD has delivered 2,788,900
BAGHDAD 00000473 002.2 OF 004
liters -- a difference of less than 0.05 percent from the MoO
report. (NOTE: While the GoI implemented the new PCD
distribution system, Coalition Battalions on the ground
observed the delivery and, in several instances, intervened
in support of the Iraqi PCD team. END NOTE.)
--------------------------------------------- -------------
SUNNI NEIGHBORHOODS GET KEROSENE FOR FIRST TIME SINCE 2006
--------------------------------------------- -------------
5. (C) Despite the high demand in Baghdad for kerosene
during a cold winter, Neighborhood Council (NAC) members and
PCD team members report that most residents served by PCD had
not yet received any government-allocated kerosene. As a
result, Jabour said, national, provincial and local
government officials have earned substantial credit at the
community level for successful delivery of kerosene through
PCD. EPRT team leaders as well as MNF-I spot reports and
surveys confirm this claim. The Coalition Battalion
Commander in Ghazaliya reported that several women literally
wept with joy while receiving their families' allotment of
kerosene. Sheikh Khaled in Ameriya, a leader of the May 2007
local rebellion against Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), told the
local EPRT team leader that his Sunni-majority neighborhood
had received kerosene from the GoI for the first time since
November 2006, thanks to the PCD initiative. Moreover,
Jabour and Coalition officers heard first-hand reports from
the Ghazaliya NAC and local residents about the effectiveness
and success of the PCD system during Jabour's February 6
visit to Ghazaliya. The locals informed Jabour that, since
2005, Ghazaliya residents had received only five percent of
their government allocation of kerosene; then, in the first
week of February, PCD delivered the full portion of kerosene
to the vast majority of families in Ghazaliya.
6. (C) Sayid also heard in southern (Sunni) Ghazaliya about
the failure of the GoI to deliver other essential services to
that area. Jabour, noting that his trip had raised his
awareness of service delivery problems in Sunni
neighborhoods, told poloff on February 7 that he plans to
investigate the various complaints he heard in Ghazaliya.
--------------------------------------------- -----
EXPOSING GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION AND MILITIA REVENUE
--------------------------------------------- -----
7. (C) Corruption was rampant and unmonitored before the new
distribution mechanism, Jabour told poloff February 7, but
PCD has focused senior GoI leadership on the need for
improved security and inter ministerial coordination. The
new approach, he explained, has enabled honest officials to
identify and diminish corruption. In the neighborhoods that
have benefited from PCD, Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), with
support from Coalition Forces (CF), have neutralized militia
influence and diminished -- likely eliminated -- militia
profits from kerosene distribution by securing and monitoring
the transportation of kerosene directly from fuel depots to
the citizens.
8. (C) Jabour said that the kerosene delivered to Baghdad
residents through the PCD system represents only 15 percent
of the approximately 20 million total liters supplied to
Baghdad during the same period. He has asked MoO officials
in charge of fuel distribution in Baghdad where the other 85
percent went, but has yet to receive a satisfactory answer.
Jabour said that he now realizes that millions of liters of
kerosene have been stolen or misallocated this winter. As a
result, locals have had to buy their kerosene from the black
market at severely inflated prices. Most of the income from
the sale of stolen kerosene, Jabour stressed, goes to fund
militias and terrorists. He said that the Prime Minister
raised kerosene-associated corruption in a February 6 meeting
with two Deputy Ministers and two Directors General at the
MoO. (NOTE: Minister of Oil Hussein Al-Sharastani was out of
the country at the time of the meeting. END NOTE.) The
Prime Minister asked these officials to account for millions
of liters of kerosene intended for Baghdad residents this
winter.
9. (C) Jabour noted that the MoO's financial accounts appear
to balance -- purportedly demonstrating the delivery to
locals by the MoO of every single liter received in Baghdad
-- but that these accounts have no bearing on the "reality on
the ground," where Jabour has seen that corrupt officials and
militants hijack, misdirect, and steal from kerosene delivery
trucks. (NOTE: Members of the Coalition's "Energy Fusion
Cell" participating in PCD have discovered that Ministry of
Oil officials regularly send trucks filled with fuel to
government-owned "gas stations" that exist on paper but are
actually empty lots or abandoned buildings. They believe
that MoO truck drivers, instead of delivering fuel products
to gas stations, deliver them straight to the black market,
most often controlled by militias and terrorists. END NOTE.)
BAGHDAD 00000473 003 OF 004
--------------------------------------------- ----
MILITANTS RESPOND TO CLEAN DELIVERY WITH VIOLENCE
--------------------------------------------- ----
10. (C) After the murder in early January of a NAC member
involved in PCD (reftel C), militants continued to react
violently to the project's implementation. Jabour said that
a local leader of Jaysh Al-Mahdi (JAM) responded angrily on
January 29 to the new, tightly monitored kerosene
distribution method by entering the offices of the northern
Ghazaliya NAC and threatening to kill the NAC member in
charge of fuel distribution. He punched a guard in the face
on his way into the office. (NOTE: The local Coalition
Battalion (1-75 CAV) confirmed the incident. END NOTE.) In
Beladiyat on January 29, locals told Jabour that JAM members
drove by the distribution point and fired guns out of their
car windows over peoples' heads -- a "drive by" shooting
apparently intended to intimidate local residents and the NAC
member helping them. Early on the morning of February 1, men
entered the home of the same NAC member's bodyguard and shot
him to death. Jabour believes these men were JAM members,
and the GoI is investigating this murder.
11. (C) In southern Ghazaliya on February 6, local militants
launched an improvised explosive device (IED) at a truck
transporting kerosene as part of the PCD system -- an almost
unprecedented attack. (NOTE: Militants usually do not
believe that fuel trucks have sufficient protection to
require an IED attack; if they want to divert or steal from
fuel trucks, they simply hijack them. Local Coaltion units
believe that AQI detonated this IED because they perceived
that northern (Shia) Ghazaliya received more kerosene than
did southern (Sunni) Ghazaliya. END NOTE.) In another
neighborhood, Zayuna, JAM members stayed away from the
well-protected kerosene trucks while people picked up their
kerosene. In the evenings, however, JAM went door-to-door
asking for a portion of the money they did not receive at the
point of sale; they told people that they -- JAM members --
had delivered the kerosene, not the government, and they
therefore deserved to be paid.
-------------------------------------
PROBLEMS WITH THE NEW DELIVERY SYSTEM
-------------------------------------
12. (C) Members of the Iraqi team -- including Provincial
and Neighborhood Council members, and the MoO Deputy IG --
estimate that 90 percent of local residents in the targeted
neighborhoods received their kerosene at the government
stipulated quantity and price thanks to the new PCD
distribution system. (NOTE: Coalition forces in the Energy
Fusion Cell and on the ground in the affected neighborhoods
concur with this assessment. END NOTE.) PCD did not achieve
100 percent success, however, despite high-level GoI
attention, Iraqi inter agency coordination, and Coalition
support. Notable problems emerged during the implementation
of PCD in some of Baghdad's toughest neighborhoods. While
most Iraqi participants in the initiative performed
admirably, some soldiers in the Iraqi Army (IA) extorted
extra fees from residents; several NAC members diverted
trucks to support the black market; thieves stole several
thousand liters of kerosene from a truck located on an IA
forward operating base; and some MoO officials at the Baghdad
Distribution Center attempted to obstruct implementation of
the new system.
13. (C) The Deputy IG at the MoO, a participant on the Iraqi
inter agency team, noted these and other problems candidly
and openly in his own written assessment of the PCD system,
which he has submitted to the Prime Minister at successive
I-ESC meetings. Jabour said that he would work to rectify
the corrupt practices that his team observed at the Baghdad
Distribution Center and within the Neighborhood Councils.
"You can't expect to transform a system that has corruption
everywhere and not have problems," he said. "They are
inevitable." (COMMENT: The continued success of the new PCD
distribution system will depend upon the GoI's implementation
of management controls and provision of the security required
to enforce them. END COMMENT.)
---------------------------------
CLEAN DELIVERY IN BROADER CONTEXT
---------------------------------
14. (C) According to the Iraqi PCD team and post's local
contacts, the GoI has failed to distribute an adequate supply
of kerosene to Baghdad residents during every winter since
2003. MoO technocrats estimate that Baghdad needs to receive
approximately two million liters of kerosene per day in order
to meet demand. This winter, according to the MoO IG,
Baghdad has received, on average, 650,000 liters per day.
GoI officials and residents allege that a complex web of
BAGHDAD 00000473 004 OF 004
inter-related factors -- including corruption, militia
influence, insurgent attacks, antiquated infrastructure,
incompetence, and lack of inter ministerial coordination --
hamper both the supply and distribution of this commodity
during the critical winter months. Local contacts and
Coalition intelligence analysts also report that militias and
terrorists earn a significant portion of their revenue from
stealing and selling kerosene.
------------------------------------------
APPLYING LESSONS LEARNED TO OTHER SERVICES
------------------------------------------
15. (C) Jabour, recognizing that hundreds of thousands of
Baghdad residents did not receive an adequate supply of
kerosene this winter, told poloff February 15 that his team
will apply the lessons learned this winter to improve and
sustain the new distribution mechanism. Jabour said that he
believes his team can also apply these lessons to the
distribution of other petroleum products and, ultimately,
other essential services. The Coalition interagency team
supporting Project Clean Delivery has begun to facilitate the
preparation of a comprehensive "after action" analysis and
assessment of the project for use by the Iraqi inter agency
team, with the aim of replicating the project's most
successful elements in more neighborhoods and additional
services.
CROCKER

Raw content

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 BAGHDAD 000473
SIPDIS
SIPDIS
E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/12/2018
TAGS: VPGOV, KDEM, PINR, PINS, PTER, IZ
SUBJECT: GOI FIGHTS KEROSENE CORRUPTION, MILITIA RACKETS
REF: A. 2007 BAGHDAD 4002 - IESC MEETING OF DECEMBER 7
B. BAGHDAD 342 - IESC MEETING OF FEBRUARY 1
C. BAGHDAD 177 - A GLIMPSE OF COURAGE IN BAGHDAD
Classified By: Classified by Deputy Political Counselor Greg D'Elia for
reasons 1.4 (b,d).
1. (C) SUMMARY: Sayid Nemah Jabour of the office of the
Iraqi National Security Advisor told poloff February 15 that
the new Project Clean Delivery (PCD) kerosene distribution
system had significantly diminished militia revenue from the
theft and sale of kerosene. Jabour said that an Iraqi
interagency team had conducted a "clean" delivery through PCD
to six of Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhoods since
January 28. Approximately 90 percent of kerosene deliveries
in the PCD neighborhoods avoided militia profiteering and
government corruption by going straight from the fuel depot
to the consumer, in the estimate of Jabour and the Deputy
Inspector General of the Ministry of Oil (MoO), Alaa Mahdi
Al-Deen. According to Jabour and Al-Deen, PCD has served the
GoI as an invaluable diagnostic instrument, exposing the
fraudulent practices of MoO officials who aid and abet
militia control of essential services. Jabour described to
the Prime Minister on February 1 the systemic corruption in
kerosene distribution that PCD uncovered during its first
five days -- the MoO cannot account for about 85 percent of
the kerosene distributed in non-PCD Baghdad neighborhoods
during the period that PCD has operated. Jabour argued that
the violent response of militants -- killing two local
officials involved with PCD and threatening two others --
confirms the project's impact. Jabour's team intends to
build on PCD to improve and sustain a new Baghdad-wide
distribution system for kerosene, and to extend their system
to other petroleum products. END SUMMARY.
--------------------------------------------- ---------------
PROJECT AIMS TO IMPROVE ESSENTIAL SERVICES, FIGHT CORRUPTION
--------------------------------------------- ---------------
2. (C) BACKGROUND: Initiated in September 2007 by the
Embassy political section, Project Clean Delivery (PCD) aims
to build GoI capacity to provide essential services by
improving efficiency, removing corruption and countering
militia influence (reftels A and B). PCD seeks to help
Iraqis develop "best practices" recommendations through a
close focus on one service -- the distribution of kerosene to
Baghdad residents. The timing has been critical, since
Baghdad residents rely on kerosene to heat their homes during
the winter. After two months of inter agency research and
development by a team comprising seventeen different
Coalition agencies, Embassy officers identified in November
an Iraqi "champion" to lead the project: Sayid Jabour
(strictly protect) of the office of the National Security
Advisor.
3. (C) BACKGROUND CONT'D: Jabour immediately assumed
ownership of the project and assembled an Iraqi inter agency
team from eight government entities. With Jabour fully in
charge, the Coalition adopted a support and advisory role.
That approach was vindicated in late November when Jabour and
his team devised a new kerosene distribution plan that
featured significantly enhanced security measures and inter
ministerial coordination. They then implemented a pilot
project to deliver kerosene more efficiently and "cleanly" in
one Baghdad neighborhood -- Kindi -- during December. After
the success of their pilot project, the Iraqi PCD team began
January 28 to expand their new system to six more
neighborhoods, and plan to continue expanding it throughout
Baghdad. END BACKGROUND.
--------------------------------------------- ---
A "CLEAN" DELIVERY TO 28,000 FAMILIES IN BAGHDAD
--------------------------------------------- ---
4. (C) Members of the Iraqi inter agency PCD team told
PRToff that, as of February 17, they had delivered
approximately 2.8 million liters of kerosene to 28,000
families in seven Baghdad neighborhoods (Kindi (pilot
project), Ameriya, Ghazaliya, Zayuna, Beladiyat, Zafaraniya,
and Salhiya). Jabour said that his team and the MoO
Inspector General's (IG) office tracked the kerosene
delivered through PCD from the ground (or import) to the
depot and then all the way to the consumer. Since the
project's expansion began on January 28, they have provided a
weekly update on its implementation directly to the Prime
Minister at the Iraq Executive Steering Committee (I-ESC)
meeting. To illustrate his close inspection, the MoO Deputy
IG, Alaa Mahdi Al-Deen (strictly protect), told PRToff
February 18 that the GoI has delivered precisely 2,801,030
liters of kerosene through the new PCD system. In a separate
conversation, the leading Baghdad Provincial Council member
on the PCD team, Salam Hanoun Mosalat (strictly protect),
told PRToff February 18 that PCD has delivered 2,788,900
BAGHDAD 00000473 002.2 OF 004
liters -- a difference of less than 0.05 percent from the MoO
report. (NOTE: While the GoI implemented the new PCD
distribution system, Coalition Battalions on the ground
observed the delivery and, in several instances, intervened
in support of the Iraqi PCD team. END NOTE.)
--------------------------------------------- -------------
SUNNI NEIGHBORHOODS GET KEROSENE FOR FIRST TIME SINCE 2006
--------------------------------------------- -------------
5. (C) Despite the high demand in Baghdad for kerosene
during a cold winter, Neighborhood Council (NAC) members and
PCD team members report that most residents served by PCD had
not yet received any government-allocated kerosene. As a
result, Jabour said, national, provincial and local
government officials have earned substantial credit at the
community level for successful delivery of kerosene through
PCD. EPRT team leaders as well as MNF-I spot reports and
surveys confirm this claim. The Coalition Battalion
Commander in Ghazaliya reported that several women literally
wept with joy while receiving their families' allotment of
kerosene. Sheikh Khaled in Ameriya, a leader of the May 2007
local rebellion against Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), told the
local EPRT team leader that his Sunni-majority neighborhood
had received kerosene from the GoI for the first time since
November 2006, thanks to the PCD initiative. Moreover,
Jabour and Coalition officers heard first-hand reports from
the Ghazaliya NAC and local residents about the effectiveness
and success of the PCD system during Jabour's February 6
visit to Ghazaliya. The locals informed Jabour that, since
2005, Ghazaliya residents had received only five percent of
their government allocation of kerosene; then, in the first
week of February, PCD delivered the full portion of kerosene
to the vast majority of families in Ghazaliya.
6. (C) Sayid also heard in southern (Sunni) Ghazaliya about
the failure of the GoI to deliver other essential services to
that area. Jabour, noting that his trip had raised his
awareness of service delivery problems in Sunni
neighborhoods, told poloff on February 7 that he plans to
investigate the various complaints he heard in Ghazaliya.
--------------------------------------------- -----
EXPOSING GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION AND MILITIA REVENUE
--------------------------------------------- -----
7. (C) Corruption was rampant and unmonitored before the new
distribution mechanism, Jabour told poloff February 7, but
PCD has focused senior GoI leadership on the need for
improved security and inter ministerial coordination. The
new approach, he explained, has enabled honest officials to
identify and diminish corruption. In the neighborhoods that
have benefited from PCD, Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), with
support from Coalition Forces (CF), have neutralized militia
influence and diminished -- likely eliminated -- militia
profits from kerosene distribution by securing and monitoring
the transportation of kerosene directly from fuel depots to
the citizens.
8. (C) Jabour said that the kerosene delivered to Baghdad
residents through the PCD system represents only 15 percent
of the approximately 20 million total liters supplied to
Baghdad during the same period. He has asked MoO officials
in charge of fuel distribution in Baghdad where the other 85
percent went, but has yet to receive a satisfactory answer.
Jabour said that he now realizes that millions of liters of
kerosene have been stolen or misallocated this winter. As a
result, locals have had to buy their kerosene from the black
market at severely inflated prices. Most of the income from
the sale of stolen kerosene, Jabour stressed, goes to fund
militias and terrorists. He said that the Prime Minister
raised kerosene-associated corruption in a February 6 meeting
with two Deputy Ministers and two Directors General at the
MoO. (NOTE: Minister of Oil Hussein Al-Sharastani was out of
the country at the time of the meeting. END NOTE.) The
Prime Minister asked these officials to account for millions
of liters of kerosene intended for Baghdad residents this
winter.
9. (C) Jabour noted that the MoO's financial accounts appear
to balance -- purportedly demonstrating the delivery to
locals by the MoO of every single liter received in Baghdad
-- but that these accounts have no bearing on the "reality on
the ground," where Jabour has seen that corrupt officials and
militants hijack, misdirect, and steal from kerosene delivery
trucks. (NOTE: Members of the Coalition's "Energy Fusion
Cell" participating in PCD have discovered that Ministry of
Oil officials regularly send trucks filled with fuel to
government-owned "gas stations" that exist on paper but are
actually empty lots or abandoned buildings. They believe
that MoO truck drivers, instead of delivering fuel products
to gas stations, deliver them straight to the black market,
most often controlled by militias and terrorists. END NOTE.)
BAGHDAD 00000473 003 OF 004
--------------------------------------------- ----
MILITANTS RESPOND TO CLEAN DELIVERY WITH VIOLENCE
--------------------------------------------- ----
10. (C) After the murder in early January of a NAC member
involved in PCD (reftel C), militants continued to react
violently to the project's implementation. Jabour said that
a local leader of Jaysh Al-Mahdi (JAM) responded angrily on
January 29 to the new, tightly monitored kerosene
distribution method by entering the offices of the northern
Ghazaliya NAC and threatening to kill the NAC member in
charge of fuel distribution. He punched a guard in the face
on his way into the office. (NOTE: The local Coalition
Battalion (1-75 CAV) confirmed the incident. END NOTE.) In
Beladiyat on January 29, locals told Jabour that JAM members
drove by the distribution point and fired guns out of their
car windows over peoples' heads -- a "drive by" shooting
apparently intended to intimidate local residents and the NAC
member helping them. Early on the morning of February 1, men
entered the home of the same NAC member's bodyguard and shot
him to death. Jabour believes these men were JAM members,
and the GoI is investigating this murder.
11. (C) In southern Ghazaliya on February 6, local militants
launched an improvised explosive device (IED) at a truck
transporting kerosene as part of the PCD system -- an almost
unprecedented attack. (NOTE: Militants usually do not
believe that fuel trucks have sufficient protection to
require an IED attack; if they want to divert or steal from
fuel trucks, they simply hijack them. Local Coaltion units
believe that AQI detonated this IED because they perceived
that northern (Shia) Ghazaliya received more kerosene than
did southern (Sunni) Ghazaliya. END NOTE.) In another
neighborhood, Zayuna, JAM members stayed away from the
well-protected kerosene trucks while people picked up their
kerosene. In the evenings, however, JAM went door-to-door
asking for a portion of the money they did not receive at the
point of sale; they told people that they -- JAM members --
had delivered the kerosene, not the government, and they
therefore deserved to be paid.
-------------------------------------
PROBLEMS WITH THE NEW DELIVERY SYSTEM
-------------------------------------
12. (C) Members of the Iraqi team -- including Provincial
and Neighborhood Council members, and the MoO Deputy IG --
estimate that 90 percent of local residents in the targeted
neighborhoods received their kerosene at the government
stipulated quantity and price thanks to the new PCD
distribution system. (NOTE: Coalition forces in the Energy
Fusion Cell and on the ground in the affected neighborhoods
concur with this assessment. END NOTE.) PCD did not achieve
100 percent success, however, despite high-level GoI
attention, Iraqi inter agency coordination, and Coalition
support. Notable problems emerged during the implementation
of PCD in some of Baghdad's toughest neighborhoods. While
most Iraqi participants in the initiative performed
admirably, some soldiers in the Iraqi Army (IA) extorted
extra fees from residents; several NAC members diverted
trucks to support the black market; thieves stole several
thousand liters of kerosene from a truck located on an IA
forward operating base; and some MoO officials at the Baghdad
Distribution Center attempted to obstruct implementation of
the new system.
13. (C) The Deputy IG at the MoO, a participant on the Iraqi
inter agency team, noted these and other problems candidly
and openly in his own written assessment of the PCD system,
which he has submitted to the Prime Minister at successive
I-ESC meetings. Jabour said that he would work to rectify
the corrupt practices that his team observed at the Baghdad
Distribution Center and within the Neighborhood Councils.
"You can't expect to transform a system that has corruption
everywhere and not have problems," he said. "They are
inevitable." (COMMENT: The continued success of the new PCD
distribution system will depend upon the GoI's implementation
of management controls and provision of the security required
to enforce them. END COMMENT.)
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CLEAN DELIVERY IN BROADER CONTEXT
---------------------------------
14. (C) According to the Iraqi PCD team and post's local
contacts, the GoI has failed to distribute an adequate supply
of kerosene to Baghdad residents during every winter since
2003. MoO technocrats estimate that Baghdad needs to receive
approximately two million liters of kerosene per day in order
to meet demand. This winter, according to the MoO IG,
Baghdad has received, on average, 650,000 liters per day.
GoI officials and residents allege that a complex web of
BAGHDAD 00000473 004 OF 004
inter-related factors -- including corruption, militia
influence, insurgent attacks, antiquated infrastructure,
incompetence, and lack of inter ministerial coordination --
hamper both the supply and distribution of this commodity
during the critical winter months. Local contacts and
Coalition intelligence analysts also report that militias and
terrorists earn a significant portion of their revenue from
stealing and selling kerosene.
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APPLYING LESSONS LEARNED TO OTHER SERVICES
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15. (C) Jabour, recognizing that hundreds of thousands of
Baghdad residents did not receive an adequate supply of
kerosene this winter, told poloff February 15 that his team
will apply the lessons learned this winter to improve and
sustain the new distribution mechanism. Jabour said that he
believes his team can also apply these lessons to the
distribution of other petroleum products and, ultimately,
other essential services. The Coalition interagency team
supporting Project Clean Delivery has begun to facilitate the
preparation of a comprehensive "after action" analysis and
assessment of the project for use by the Iraqi inter agency
team, with the aim of replicating the project's most
successful elements in more neighborhoods and additional
services.
CROCKER